


Vates

by thoodleoo



Category: Ancient History RPF, Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF
Genre: Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4821197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoodleoo/pseuds/thoodleoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ovid is a poet and he definitely knows it. The prophecy part, though? That's a little harder to grasp. AU where Ovid is a seer who predicts his own fate and has no clue that he's doing so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vates

People call them the _vates_. Poet-seers. Prophet-songwriters. Versifiers given special gifts by the Muses or, on the rare occasion, Apollo himself (the oracles all speak in the meter of epics, after all). It is an ancient word, so old that for a while it fell out of usage in favor of the less prophetic _poeta_. Vergil was the first to bring it back in his songs, and in turn the people took to calling him by that title, unaware of just how accurate it was- it was not entirely because of his shy nature that he often secluded himself and spent hours staring into space in distant-eyed horror. Horace gladly took the title upon himself, calling himself the _biformis vates_ and speaking of his place among his lyric forebears- he was a fortunate one, his Muses kind and his visions rustic, simple, rarely tending towards the grand.

            By Ovid's time, it is merely another name for what he does. The implication of divine inspiration is still there, of course. But who really believes in the Muses, who really thinks that Apollo's touch graces poetic minds? The gods of poetry have become nothing more than poems themselves, metaphors to be manipulated by the minds they supposedly bless.

            Perhaps, then, it is only fair that those gods call down their curses upon their wayward subjects. Apollo is no stranger to ungratefulness, no tyro to prophetic punishments. For every Orpheus born with the power to move nature with a song, there is a Cassandra to sing a disregarded prophecy. But Cassandra at least had the satisfaction of knowing that her predictions would someday come true; hindsight is a harsher punishment, not to recognize one's own forecasts until after the fact a crueler sentence.

            Thus Ovid's song.

* * *

 

            The visions come early, though they are not visions in the typical sense. There are times when Ovid is struck with a fierce and sudden realization of emotions he does not understand. He cannot explain them- some things are beyond words, even for a poet- but he recognizes a certain loneliness, a helpless sense of betrayal, of desperate homesickness, a waking dream of half-empty beds. His friends laugh at his look of confusion, and within a few seconds, he laughs too. For what can he do but laugh, to shake off the sensation of being alone even when among friends?

            Well, that's not entirely true. There is one other thing Ovid can do. He occupies his hands with wax tablets and his mind with heroes and their heroines. He writes the letters of mythological women to their absent lovers; somehow, it eases the ache in his heart, lessens the effect of his strange emotional bouts. He does not know why, but the letters feel personal, written from his heart. He imagines himself as Ariadne weeping over once-warm sheets and an exile's fate, and the pain, for at least a brief moment, is more bearable.

            Ovid dreams of himself left all alone on Naxos, but he never thinks to question why the Naxos of his dreams is always so cold. 

* * *

 

            Serves me right, Ovid says in the last book of his _Amores_ , and he cannot help the strange sense of foreboding as he writes it. For a moment he tries to scrap that particular passage, but his Muses don't allow it. So he makes it into a joke, complaining of the envy other men direct at him, and curses his fate, that Apollo and the Muses let him write such painful verse. His words dance through playful elegiac couplets in mock despair, bemoaning that this harmful song ever came to his mind.

            Playful elegiacs, Ovid tells himself, but he cannot stop the panic that builds up deep in his chest when he reads over his own verse.

* * *

 

            Neither Phoebus nor Jupiter Ammon will sing more truths than my Muse, Ovid says in his  _Ars Amatoria_ , that cursed little book. And yet, his Muses are oddly silent throughout the work. He feels no strange and sudden inspirations, writes no foreboding lines that make him frown over his writing tablets for days on end, trying to smooth over the wax and never quite being able to make himself do it. The poem comes from personal experience, entirely from his own mind, and he has to admit that it's a little refreshing.

            If only he knew why his Muses were silent.

            But still, in spite of their silence, Ovid tells his readers to put faith in his art, in this gift the Muses have given him, not knowing that one day he would look back and wish that the master had taken his own advice to heart. 

* * *

 

 

            The _Metamorphoses_ are a warning. Ovid should have wondered why his elegiac inspiration had suddenly shifted itself to stories of shifted forms, of change. The idea came to him after the _Amores_ \- he had even gone so far as to say goodbye to elegy at the end of the poem- but he resisted as much as he could, tackling his _Ars Amatoria_ first. In the end, though, he is not one to question the Muses he does not believe in; he simply follows where they lead. My mind wants to sing of figures changed into new forms- such he begins his song, and for fifteen books he sings of nothing but change.

            The visions come more strongly, now, fierce bursts of fear and grief and horrid dreams that jolt Ovid awake and leave him unable to fall back asleep, dreams of dreary cold, of barbarian tongues, of hemlock running down his throat. He chalks it up to the material he's been studying for his poetry; myths are the stuff of nightmares, cruel gods and unassailable fate and irrevocable change, and late nights spent over scrolls and passing out at his desk are not the best way to avoid dreaming of what he reads. It's nothing, he tells himself- he has always been telling himself that it is nothing, but that is getting harder and harder to believe, and no matter what he tells himself, the visions come, relentless.

            Ovid fights the feelings when he can. He puts his own desperate thoughts into the mouths of his characters; to wish for death is the coward's part, he has Pyramus say, and it gives him the strength of heart to ignore his hemlock-heavy visions. But more often now are the days in which he writes of characters calling for their own deaths and cannot help identifying with their plights.

            Death is not painful to me, Ovid's Narcissus says, for in death I shall lay aside my pains. Ovid has no clue why- he has no pains to speak of, aside from his inexplicable dreams and emotions- but Narcissus speaks to him most of all of these characters and their changed forms; Narcissus who scorned others because he could not see past himself, Narcissus who died for doing so. 

* * *

 

            It's funny, Ovid thinks as he shivers beneath sheets that have never been warm enough for Tomis's winter, for this barbarian land where he has been forced to spend his days. It's funny how all of the signs were there, how the Muses were constantly warning him and yet he never saw it, doomed to predict his own fate, cursed to not realize it until it was too late. He knows now why he had thought of himself as Narcissus wasting away by the water, as Ariadne abandoned on Naxos, but it is only now, when there is nothing to be done. He, who once wrote of cruel gods that he had no belief in, has learned just how cruel- and just how real- those gods are.

            Perhaps the cruelest thing of all, though, is that despite everything, the Muses have not abandoned Ovid, that the visions still come. They are the same bleak dreams he had when he was writing the _Metamorphoses_ , and much as he tries to shake them off and convince himself that things cannot get any worse, he can never completely rid himself of them. There is, as always, only one way to quiet the visions and give himself some peace; Ovid picks up his tablet and turns to poetry.

            How childish, though, to think that such comfort would last. Even the first poems of Ovid's exile cannot escape the gloom; with no one to speak to in his own language but his Muses, he cannot ignore their wretched gift. They fill his head with thoughts of his own death, and in turn he begs the gods to put him out of his misery.

            Perhaps it is hope; perhaps it is naivety. Ovid knows more than most that the gods are unkind, but still he asks for that one mercy. It is the coward's part to wish for death- he wrote those words, once- but he does not care if he is a coward if it would mean an escape from the bitter cold and loneliness of this barbarian land he's been exiled to.

            Ah, but how pointless to ask the gods who teased him with vague prophecy to grant him this kindness! Years pass with both his earthly prayers to Augustus and his heavenly prayers to the gods unanswered. Ovid turns out poetic letters begging his friends at home to speak on his behalf; his Muses, ever hateful, move his pen to speak of his desires for death. Still, he cannot make himself hate them in turn- I love poetry, he sings in his mournful songs, even though poetry has hurt me. After all, what else does he have in this lonely land but poetry?

            But poetry, much as Ovid loves it, is not enough. His visions grow stronger, harder to separate from his own independent thoughts (or rather, he thinks, the visions are coming true- he knows their power now), until Ovid is not sure that the Muses are even there, that these thoughts are not entirely his own. He does not even bother trying to ignore the feelings now. There is no point in avoiding what he knows is going to come to pass.

            The years continue to go by, taking Ovid with them. Each day is steadily more burdensome than the last, until he barely has energy to do more than write pathetic poetry and wait for letters that will never come. Even the occasional letter from his wife does little good for him, because each letter is always the same: she loves him and misses him, she hopes he is well, and no, he has not been recalled to Rome.

            For nearly ten years this goes on. Ovid cannot remember his own language, sometimes. His tongue hesitates over a phrase of Vergil, trips over Horace's dancing meters, stumbles its way through Lucretius's archaisms and Catullus's colloquialisms. He had thought to gain some comfort in the literature that had once so inspired him, but whether it is the time away from Rome or his own creeping age, that is a luxury he no longer has- it is more painful to him to see himself struggle than anything else. He gazes upon the dusty scrolls with an eye that is alternatively longing and spiteful, and all the while his Muses scream within his head for him to bleed his feelings out in ink.

            Enough, Ovid thinks. They have tortured him for far too long, teased him with almost-oracles and let him think himself safe, let him learn the true pain of being a _vates_ , and he is tired. The cup of hemlock shakes in his hands, more from exhaustion than from fear- it is not like he has not seen himself drink deeply of this cup, after all. He only wishes that he could say that he was taking his fate into his own hands for once, but his divine torturers have taken even that final pleasure from him and left him to do what they have already shown him he would.

            Enough. He will not let them ruin this as well. He shudders as he downs the cup, then lies down on his bed and waits for it to take effect.

            He called himself a _vates_ , once. But now, for the first time in a long time, his Muses are blissfully silent, and he closes his eyes and smiles.


End file.
